ometimes in modern archaeology,
despite its high-tech hardware and
increasing knowledge of ancient
cultures, the best tool any archae
ologist can have is good luck. Well,
that and a well-placed donkey's
hoof. It's precisely this combina
tion that led scientists to one of the largest con
centrations of mummies ever found in Egypt.
The year was 1996. At an isolated oasis called
Bahariya (Ba-ha-REE -ya), more than 200 miles
southwest of Cairo, a local man who guarded
the tumbledown 2,300-year-old temple of
Alexander the Great was headed to work on
his donkey.
As the guard and his mount crossed the
desert beneath a withering sun, the improbable
happened. Half a mile from the temple the
donkey's hoof literally fell through the sand.
"The guard got off his donkey," Zahi Hawass
tells me. "He helped the animal up and looked
into the hole that had been created. Inside he
saw a tomb."
Hawass, director general of the Giza Pyra
mids, Saqqara, and the Bahariya Oasis, is a
sturdy, energetic man with piercing eyes and
a leonine grin. "By law," he continues, "the area
had to be isolated and assessed by archaeolo
gists. And this is what we have...."
Hawass
lifts his red-shirted arm and motions across the
desert, where at least 150 rectangular indenta
tions the size of school buses dimple the sand.
"We're finding that each of these depressions
is a tomb," he says. "There have been Greco
Roman mummies in every one we excavate.
Mummies everywhere! In fact, we've decided